Sorry, Britt.

Posted at July 15, 2008 5:01 PM in response to The New Yorker's Fear of a Black President

Blit missed the line between freedom of speech and the responsibility to not shout "fire" in a crowded theater.

But there will only be a fire if everyone keeps whining about the New Yorker cover.

So drop it.

Posted at July 15, 2008 5:00 PM in response to The New Yorker's Fear of a Black President

If you think that's something , you should get acquainted with the entire years' covers which have featured Cheney and Bush. I've got one in a portfolio book that shows Cheney as a pumpkin carving with his characteristic sneer agressively lit from inside. Another one this February showed the classic tophatted guy with monacle as a playing card - a joker actually. One way it was Obama, the other way up it was Clinton. Then there's Steve Brodner's cartoon of Oprah holding Obama like he's the baby Jesus.

Nobody even snickered on TPM about any of those.

If you don't "get" the New Yorker, just look outside the box.

Posted at July 13, 2008 10:04 PM in response to The New Yorker's "Ironic" Obama Cover

If you really believe that I've got a bridge to sell you that I'm just positive you'll be happy to buy.

They knew what they were doing. They just liked the wording set up to give them cover.

Posted at July 8, 2008 1:49 PM in response to Today's Must Read

Let me see if I can fool the site once more
Starting tag looks like this without the spaces:

Closing tag looks like this without the spaces:

Posted at June 24, 2008 11:40 PM in response to True Campaign Reform: Bring People into Politics

put a slash before the b in the html tag. starting tags have closing tags have

Posted at June 24, 2008 11:37 PM in response to True Campaign Reform: Bring People into Politics

djamo, I understand your point, but you know, surely, that realistically noone would get elected if they did not campaign to some extent. And that the media will not spend their resources to cover candidates out of the kindness of their greedy bloated hearts. So, pretty inevitably, somehow some money has to be located to pay the photographers', reporters' and webmasters' bills if any candidate is going to be noticed by the electorate.

Now, if you wish to propose that campaign seasons should be curtailed so that the cost of those photogs, reporters and web masters are smaller, I suspect lots of the people here, including Ms. Skocpol, could happily engage with that subject.

But to simply throw the relative cost of rebuilding NOLA up against the amount of money we anticipate this presidential campaign will raise and spend doesn't further the conversation, as I see it.

Look, the entire question is so large that bringing up any alternative to spending money on campaigning becomes a door to all that space. Sure we could spend the money to rebuild NOLA, but we can't even agree that rebuilding NOLA is a good idea. Certainly, environmentally, NOLA should never have even come into existence and clearly we would do better to spend some of the money on rooting out shady contractors to the Army Corps and enforcing standards for the retention of inspectors. But then we're going up river, where construction is hardly pristine, vis. the mess we're looking at this year, not to mention that our impact on the weather is still a point of wide disagreement among the populace. So right there we're confronting off-shore oil drilling and we're back to NOLA.

So putting the $500Mil that Barack and his opponent will be spending to get elected into context requires a much wider vision than just one pet project or gripe of any single one of us.

Posted at June 24, 2008 7:24 PM in response to True Campaign Reform: Bring People into Politics

Nope, just saying it may last a lot shorter time than the populists here expect.

No value statement involved.

Posted at June 24, 2008 8:23 AM in response to True Campaign Reform: Bring People into Politics

Obama has discovered the much better route to democratic revitalization.

Well, I'm not sure I'd be willing to commit to this - it seems to me that the truth of it remains to be seen.

Interesting as it is to try to ascribe to one portion of the electoral process (raising money) a panoply of characteristics (improved participation, diffusion of influence) it seems to me that this thread is not considering some important factors.

For instance there's generational participation, and the particular candidate's style, and the fact that access to this new means of raising money is not any more universal than bundling events. Consider, for instance, the woman described in this article by Professor X http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/college whose preparation for participation in a computer linked society was so non-existent that she had no idea of how to research a topic, much less write a paper. And consider the fact that the primary source of carbon emissions is the burning of coal to produce electricity. Until we figure out how to power this internet age with some means other than coal burning, the cost of electricity is either going to eliminate this new-found means of money raising, or again make it available only to those who can afford the electric bill.

And, although I found Senator Obama's personal style and presentation enormously attractive, keep in mind that 40-odd percent of the polled populace does not, and that half the voters who participated in the Democratic primary elections also were not particularly attracted to him.

After listening to Diane Rehm interview James Hansen this morning, reinforced by the scientific community's worries here in Woods Hole where I live (about which I have been hearing now for 28 years, and looking at the abject failure of our society to bring out society-wide lifestyle change, the age of the Internet community building and fund raising may be a whole lot shorter than we can presently perceive.

For all we know, we may be at the end of this new, exciting means of promoting participation by the populace at large, not at the beginning.

Posted at June 24, 2008 12:02 AM in response to True Campaign Reform: Bring People into Politics

Now that's power. MoveOn's ads were always off beat as it was, and they would have added some visual garlic or paprika to the campaign. In that sense it's kinda a shame that they agreed, but in the sense that Mr. Obama needs to bend over backward to be perfect, and that Soros understands that, I guess I'm OK with it.

Personally I'd be willing to take bets that we'll be hearing the campaign running 30-sec. spot ad competitions within a couple of weeks. There was some very high quality stuff coming down the pipe from MoveOn for this season. Axlerod knows good advertising when he sees it.

Posted at June 20, 2008 12:44 PM in response to Exclusive: MoveOn To Close Its 527 In Response To Obama's Candidacy